Language

Theresa Wellington- McGilton

Richard Simpson 

16 February 2021 

Response Paper 

How to Tame a Wild Tongue

In Gloria Anzaldua’s, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” she analyzes the cultural and social differences between Mexican and American culture and how immigrants fall in the middle. She believes that one shouldn’t be looked down upon simply because they speak another language. 

A main theme that coursed through the paper was acculturation. Her belief is that people shouldn’t have to give up who they are to feel like they can be successful. Individuals shouldn’t have to give up their culture or their language to be successful where they are. The author believes that for her and others like her to be successful in America they have to abandon who they are and she gives real life examples from her own experiences to back up her claims. 

I agree with a good amount of the author’s thoughts and I think that is because of who I am and where I come from. She speaks about being a little girl and not being able to speak Spanish and if she was caught doing so there was a punishment. This kind of thing hasn’t directly happened to me, but my people’s language is dying in part because of events like these. My grandparent’s generation was ‘discouraged’ from speaking the native language this way. 

After I finished this reading I found myself spotting the similarities between her stories/ examples and my own culture. I guess you could say that I get where she is coming from and my people understand some of the experiences she’s had. At the end of the piece she says, “Yet the struggle of identities continues, the struggle of borders is our reality still…” As long as people are made to feel “lesser” because of who they are what ethnicity they are, the inner struggle of identities will continue.